Michigan Supreme Court

Lansing, Michigan

Marilyn Kelly,

 Chief Justice

Michael F. Cavanagh

Elizabeth A. Weaver

Maura D. Corrigan

Robert P. Young, Jr.

Stephen J. Markman

Diane M. Hathaway, Justices

Order 

September 25, 2009 

138018 & (58) 

RODNEY HOOVER and MAXINE HOOVER, 

Conservators of the Estate of MICHAEL 

HOOVER, a Developmentally Disabled Person, 

Plaintiffs-Appellants, 

v SC: 138018 

 COA: 278237 

Genesee CC: 86-085769-NZ 

MICHIGAN MUTUAL INSURANCE 

COMPANY, a/k/a AMERISURE, 

Defendant-Appellee. 

_________________________________________/ 

On order of the Court, the motion for leave to file brief amicus curiae is 

GRANTED. The application for leave to appeal the December 11, 2008 judgment of the 

Court of Appeals is considered, and it is GRANTED. The parties shall include among 

the issues to be briefed whether, or to what extent, the defendant is obligated to pay the 

plaintiffs personal protection insurance benefits under the no-fault act, MCL 500.3101 et 

seq., for housing and living expenses, as well as services, associated with the care of the 

plaintiffs’ adult son, Michael Hoover, and whether Griffith v State Farm Mutual 

Automobile Ins Co, 472 Mich 521 (2005), was correctly decided. 

 KELLY, C.J. (concurring). 

 Justice Young’s dissenting statement is short on the civility that, in my opinion, 

justices of this Court owe one another out of respect for others’ sincerely held beliefs and 

honorable motivations. 

 It is also inaccurate in several respects. For example, my vote here represents no 

change in my fidelity to judicial restraint and stare decisis. In the case of Peterson v 

Magna Corp, 484 Mich 300 (2009), issued a mere 60 days ago, I provided a lengthy 

statement detailing that fidelity. Like my vote in this case, my position in Peterson is 

wholly consistent with my past “clamorings.” I urge all who are interested to read 

Peterson. 

 YOUNG, J. (dissenting). 

 I would deny leave to appeal. I therefore dissent from the order granting leave to 

appeal in this case and inviting the parties to reconsider whether Griffith v State Farm 
I, Corbin R. Davis, Clerk of the Michigan Supreme Court, certify that the 

foregoing is a true and complete copy of the order entered at the direction of the Court. 

 _________________________________________ 

 Clerk

September 25, 2009 

p0922 

 

2

Mut Automobile Ins Co, 472 Mich 521 (2005), was correctly decided. This case 

represents the latest installment on Chief Justice Kelly’s promise to undo “the damage 

that the Republican Court has done” during the last decade. Brian Dickerson, GOP 

Justices Gird for Gang of 3 1/2, Detroit Free Press, January 11, 2009, at 1B. 

 It is no secret that members of the new majority share a judicial philosophy very 

different from that of the prior majority of the Taylor Court. Theirs is a philosophy that 

allows empathy (or “equity”) to trump the words of a statute. While the majority is 

within its rights to reconsider Griffith, doing so is incompatible with the respect for 

judicial restraint and stare decisis that members of the new majority stoutly professed for 

over a decade. Indeed, the new majority’s actions smack of the very “pattern of 

exercising power to overturn numerous longstanding precedents in a manner that lacks 

judicial restraint” that Justice Cavanagh once decried in attacking the Taylor Court in 

Cooper v Wade, 461 Mich 1201, 1203 (1999).1

 Moreover, not only is today’s order a 

hypocritical change in the new majority’s purported fidelity to stare decisis, today’s order 

is indicative of the zeal with which the majority is attempting to obliterate this Court’s 

last decade of work. Chief Justice Kelly was once concerned that “if each successive 

Court, believing its reading is correct and past readings wrong, rejects precedent, then the 

law will fluctuate from year to year, rendering our jurisprudence dangerously unstable.” 

Pohutski v City of Allen Park, 465 Mich 675, 712 (2002) (Kelly, J., dissenting).2

 The 

majority’s decision to reconsider a decision handed down just four years ago proves that 

her fears for preserving precedent pertained only to precedent with which she personally 

agreed. I suspect we will hear no more about stare decisis from the new majority. 

 

1 Lenawee Co Bd of Rd Comm’rs v State Auto Prop & Cas Ins Co, ___ Mich ___ (2009) 

(Docket Nos. 137667, 137668, order entered September 2, 2009) (Cavanagh, J., 

concurring). Ten years ago, Justice Cavanagh, joined by then Justice Kelly, dissented in 

Cooper from an order that asked the parties to address whether the Court should exercise 

its authority to reconsider certain previously decided cases. He explained that “the fact 

that a majority would feel that the proper exercise of its duties mandates that [it] revisit 

every decision of this Court that [it] might question and have the power to reach . . . is a 

troubling thought.” Cooper, 461 Mich at 1203. Instead, he counseled “a necessary 

measure of judicial restraint.” Id.

2

 The actions of this new majority demonstrate that its previous clamorings about stare 

decisis were no more than political posturing.